I like very much your site ... but about Greece, Spain and the Eurozone
you obviously have a US bias. In my opinion, you are indeed missing four
key aspects of the situation:

1. Greece is known for three decades to be 'the' failed EU enlargement.
So what is going on there is as much a crisis of the Greek debt as much as
an intrumentalisation of the situation by other Eurozone member states to
put Greece once for all on the right tracks.

2. for three years, the Eurozone leaders have been desesperately trying
to find a way to prevent the Euro-Dollar rate to rocket till 1,60, 1,70 or
more. And thanks to the very amateurish GoldmanSachs/hedge funds bets against
the Greek bonds and the Euro, they are served on a silver plate with a Euro-Dollar
rate at 1,36. So don't expect the Eurozone leaders to hurry anything in order
to get the Euro-Dollar rate back to 1,50. -)

3. despite the amazing propaganda machine around the Greek debt (snow storms
on the East coast were the only recent things which were not put on the back
of the 'Greek bond fear'), the Euro-Dollar is stable at 1,36. Guess what
will happen when the 'Greek tragedy' will pass fashion as it starts to do?
by the way, with only 70 000 demonstrators in the streets of Athens two days
ago (a very small number by Greek standarts), it is now clear that Greek
public opinion will accept the austerity measures. Too bad for one of the
'Greek tragedy' scenario: political instability. You may read http://www.leap2020.eu for
more on that aspect.

4. Spain got into the Eurozone in a fair way (not like Greece) and its exposure
to real estate wounds is nothing compared to US or UK. Meanwhile in the Eurozone
the heavyweight, like Germany, is sound ... while in the US, it's the heavyweights
(California, Florida, New York, Michigan, ...) which are in trouble; and
in UK, everything is in trouble. So, the day Spain will be suck into such
problems will be the exact same day UK and US will be as well. I make a bet
that on that very day, nobody will care of Spain and the Euro 'problems'
... but everybody will run away from the Pound and the Dollar.

In conclusion, you are right to stick with your great website's name, 'Dollarcollapse'
: what we are seeing right now is the early stage of a major currency war.
And after a big offensive against the Euro, the Pound is already sinking,
and the Dollar has not gained much ground. The counter-attack is coming,
thanks to US economy : with no recovery in sight, a Eurozone not falling
apart, and the Chinese unloading T-Bonds, .... well, the result will indeed
be the coming 'Dollar Collapse' ...! -)

It's been a year, and the euro is still hanging in there. And Greece has indeed
been replaced in the headlines by the Middle East and Japan. But below the
fold, so to speak, the Eurozone's problems have been worsening. None of the
PIIGS countries are solvent and each is edging closer to some form of default/debt
restructuring/social meltdown. Meanwhile, the ability of the richer European
countries to deal with future (and inevitable) crises is politically in doubt.
Here's a survey of recent articles on the subject:

No
One to Share Burden of Spectacular Irish Banking Cost
The Irish were only recently made painfully aware of financial black days
when they were told they were in hock to the private debts of their banks.
Last year a so-called Terrible Tuesday was followed by a Tectonic Thursday
and other grim days when the public here learned they were to be held responsible
for debts of over €46 billion. The bill for bailing out its delinquent
banks already amounted to 28% of the annual output of the economy, or more
than all the tax revenues the government raises in a year.

But that was before this Thursday's disclosure of stress-test results showed
four Irish banks will need €24 billion more from Irish taxpayers. It
was just another extraordinarily grim day. It was made clear that Irish taxpayers
will be on their own in carrying the costs, while senior bond holders would
be protected.

At €70 billion, the public cost of Ireland's banking implosion is spectacular.
The bill now represents 45% of the economy's annual output. However, legacy
loan losses across the system, including those from a handful of British
and Danish-owned lenders, will rise to exceed €100 billion.

Irish Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan says, for the size of the economy,
the bust will be among the costliest in history. "This is quite a big crisis,
as everyone knows," the governor said Thursday as the authorities also confirmed
the effective nationalization of the entire banking system.

The ECB in Frankfurt was "solidly opposed" to imposing losses on investors
in senior bank debt, Finance Minister Michael
Noonan told broadcaster RTE today. The ECB agreed to provide "ongoing" funding
for the banks, he said.

Ireland agreed yesterday to inject as much as 24 billion euros into four
banks, while leaving bondholders untouched. The government already funneled
46.3 billion euros into the financial system and set up an agency that paid
more than 30 billion euros to assume risky property loans. The total equates
to about two-thirds the size of the Irish economy.

"The government's position is very clear: It doesn't want to take action
on senior bondholders for the four banks that are going forward," said Matthew
Elderfield, head of regulation at the central bank, said in an interview
with Bloomberg Television. "It recognizes that, on balance, that if you want
to have these viable banks able to return to the market that would hurt their
capacity to do that."

Ailing Spanish savings bank Caja
de Ahorros del Mediterráneo began discussing its possible nationalization
with the central bank on Thursday, after its merger with three small peers
fell apart late Wednesday.

A spokesman said the Alicante-based savings bank, or caja, is presenting
the Bank of Spain with a new business plan and an application for money from
Spain's state-financed Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, also known as
FROB. He declined to say how much money the bank, known as CAM, needed, but
analysts calculate that it would be enough to give the FROB control of more
than 50% of the bank.

The nationalization of CAM would be the first since the Spanish government,
under pressure to shore up international confidence in the health of the
country's banks, in February set new minimum capital requirements. It said
it would take equity stakes in those institutions that weren't able to raise
new money. The Bank of Spain estimated that 12 banks would have to raise
a total of €15.15 billion ($21.4 billion).

The confidence-boosting exercise, however, fell flat, as many independent
analyses said Spanish banks would need much more capital. Moody's Investors
Service, for example, estimated that banks would need between €40 billion
and €50 billion.

Fitch
Slashes Portugal's Ratings To Verge Of Junk
Fitch Ratings on Friday slashed its credit ratings on Portugal to one notch
above junk status after concluding that the embattled nation was less likely
to seek external support in the near term after setting elections for June
5. Fitch said it viewed external support as "necessary to bolster the credibility
of Portugal's fiscal consolidation and economic reform effort, as well as
secure its financing position."

It warned that any delay in securing help from the European Union and the
International Monetary Fund would increase risk to the country's economy
and financial stability; Portugal's borrowing costs have surged to unsustainable
levels after Prime Minister Jose Socrates tender his resignation last week
following the rejection of his latest austerity package.

Socrates is now head of a caretaker government that will remain in power
until a new government is sworn in. Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva
said the caretaker government has the power to request external help but
the country's Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos claims the government
has lost legitimacy and therefore wouldn't be able to ask for or negotiate
a bailout.

Merkel
Faces Pressure on Euro, Taxes
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under pressure to sharpen her party's
conservative approach toward Europe, taxes and other issues after a devastating
regional election defeat over the weekend.

Voters in the wealthy southern province of Baden-Württemberg on Sunday
booted Ms. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union from office after almost 60
years of continuous rule. The stunning loss in a populous state has emboldened
party members who have long argued she has strayed too far from conservative
principles.

One obvious target for conservatives is the government's strategy for dealing
with the euro-zone debt crisis. Many Christian Democrats have been disappointed
that the chancellor's harsh rhetoric about runaway government spending in
Greece and other weaker euro-zone countries hasn't been backed up by equally
punitive policies. Ms. Merkel has sought to appease German voters with public
calls for tough sanctions on countries that break deficit rules, but has
endorsed generous aid packages demanded by her fellow euro-zone leaders.

"We started from a deficit of around 15.5 percent. The 2010 deficit we will
find out from the statistics authority, I cannot give an estimate but it
will very likely be higher than 9.5 percent," George Papaconstantinou told
private Real FM radio, according to a transcript posted on the station's
website.

Greek reports this week said the slippage was owing to additional pension
fund deficits found by auditors from the European Union's statistics service
Eurostat who have been in Athens since last week.

If those findings are confirmed, the 2010 deficit could exceed 10 percent
of Gross Domestic Product, the reports said, despite draconian spending cutbacks
that sparked waves of general strikes and protests last year. Greek long-term
borrowing rates remain prohibitively high and the country's credit standing
has been hit by successive downgrades from rating agencies, the latest on
Tuesday from the Standard & Poor's.

Greek
teachers, doctors on strike to protest planned spending cuts
State school teachers and hospital doctors in debt-ridden Greece have walked
off the job to protest planned education and health spending cuts. Doctors
in the social security fund system were also on strike for the second day
Wednesday, demanding that their fixed-term contracts be made permanent. Health
and education unions are planning demonstrations in central Athens later
in the day, to protest planned school and hospital mergers.

Some thoughts:

Clearly, nothing has been fixed in the past year. Politicians have made some
promises and attempted to keep them. But they've failed. After a round of big
spending cuts, the PIIGS countries are still light years away from the Eurozone's
3% deficit target. Germany, meanwhile, has been leveraging itself via debt
guarantees, with little to show for it. Voters across the continent seem to
have lost their appetite for either new austerity measures or increased bailouts.

Going forward, will any PIIGS country electorate accept a radically diminished
standard of living in order to allow big international banks to keep paying
six and seven figure bonuses to their executives and traders? Will German voters
accept higher taxes and slower growth just so the Portuguese, Irish and Greeks
can avoid paying the bills they've run up? The intuitive answer to both is "hell
no", and recent elections bear this out. So expect the plans now being cooked
up by Eurocrats and their bankers to fall through in the coming year, and be
replaced with "haircuts" on euro-denominated bonds, followed by big writedowns
in bank earnings.

And that's if the process goes smoothly. The worst-case scenario of riots,
falling governments and debt defaults would put Greece and the rest of Europe
in the headlines for a long time to come.

John Rubino edits DollarCollapse.com and has authored or co-authored five
books, including The Money Bubble: What To Do Before It Pops, Clean
Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom, The Collapse of the Dollar
and How to Profit From It, and How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate
Bust. After earning a Finance MBA from New York University, he spent the
1980s on Wall Street, as a currency trader, equity analyst and junk bond analyst.
During the 1990s he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and a frequent
contributor to Individual Investor, Online Investor, and Consumers Digest,
among many other publications. He now writes for CFA Magazine.